Page 21 of Love Her Ruin
I move on the beat between thought and pull.
Two steps onto consecrated ground. I can handle that much. I move my left hand to his right wrist and pinch the webbing there, my thumb on the tendon. My hip checks his balance, then the world tightens to joints and leverage.
Twist. Pop.
Well, will ye look at that? The gun’s mine.
He swings at me, but his movements are slow and sloppy. I let his fist sail through empty air and then give him a jab to the ribs for his trouble, my knuckles driving into soft meat. The breath wheezes out of him on an “oof.”
Eddie steps in on cue, all precision. He doesn’t even look at the gun I’ve palmed; he just brings out an evidence bag, and I drop it inside. He’s still a detective even with a devil stitched into his shoulder.
“That’s attempted murder on me times two,” he says mildly. “Some would call this a bad habit.”
Vincent gapes, jaw working, eyes flicking past us to the road. Sweat beads on his lip. Up close, he smells worse than he looks.
“You…can’t….” He abandons whatever meaningless words he was about to spout when he sees my shadows creeping up his legs toward his arms.
“Hands,” I say, cheerful like.
He doesn’t listen, so my shadows make him listen. They wrench his hands behind his back with enough force for his joints to pop.
Poetics, aye.
The shadows hum loudly.
“Do ye hear that?” I bend close to his ear. The whisper’s for him and for her, my queen, sleeping across town with winter on her tongue. “That’s the choir warming up. You’re going to sing for us, Vincent. Are you nae excited?”
He snarls something about rights, attorneys, god. That last one makes me laugh.
“God’s done listening to ye. He’s sent you straight to hell.” I grin wickedly. “To us.”
He lunges for the street, definitely not back toward the church. He catches my elbow instead, straight to his temple, with a wee sweet crack like a handle breaking off a teacup.
He goes slack to the pavement, mouth open, eyes rolling back till they show a rim of white. I take his pulse because Eddie will ask and because it pleases me to feel it banging like a trapped sparrow against my fingers.
“Rest easy,” I say. “Prayer still gets the first bite.”
“Let’s go.” Eddie is already scanning the street as he strides toward my van. “We need to move before someone looks outside and sees us.”
“Aye.” I haul Vincent by the collar, deadweight now, his boots thumping the pavement.
We drag him off the holy and into our dark, and the air loses its static. I swear I feel Daddy breathe easier across town, and in that breath is the taste of Sera’s smile.
After I toss Vincent into the back of the van, I lean down next to him. “Don’t sleep too long. Ye owe the queen a hearing.”
With him secured, I start the engine. “Ready?”
Eddie nods, his eyes all blue and shadow and purpose.
“Good. Now comes the reckoning.”
Chapter 11
James
EventhoughI’mitchingfor violence, we leave Vincent down in Sera’s basement before we lay another finger on him.
That’s torture for me, but my Prayer is my queen. What she says goes.
